Get your vanilla chai tea fix at home in an instant with this homemade mix. Simple ingredients and a great gift too!

My apologies for my lapse in posting the past couple days. It’s been a whirlwind with the holidays and preparing to move. In fact, today marks the beginning of the big move to Ohio! One week to move everything into the new place, unpack, and get situated before my new job starts on January 12th. And do you know what the weather forecast for Columbus, OH is today? A steamy high of 18 degrees! What a stark contrast to my move to Memphis, TN where it was 115 degrees the day I moved there. Of course that was in August not January, but still interesting to note.

With the bitter cold, driving most of the day and unloading the truck, a warm cup of tea may be in order. Hopefully I will be able unpack some apparatus in order to warm water to do so. Conveniently I recently made this instant vanilla chai tea mix made from milk powder, non-dairy powdered creamer, sugar, instant tea, and spices. It smells as wonderful as it tastes and makes a great gift during these cold months.

These eggnog mousse sugar cookie cups are the perfect holiday treat, especially when in a pinch for time. Only 4 ingredients and they still look fancy!

Holy freaking Christmas eve. No seriously, is it really Christmas eve already? Which means that today is my last day working at the gym in my parents village. And that I am leaving TN as my residence tomorrow to spend some time in Rochester, NY for the holidays before moving to Ohio. And it also means I am severely behind on packing up what things I have here that did not get stored away in my POD still in Memphis (but soon to be transported up to Columbus, OH). Hooray procrastination!

Speaking of procrastination, I am sure there are many of you out there who waited until the last minute to whip up some crazy dessert to celebrate the holidays. Now here we are the day before Christmas and you don’t have time for crazy steps and ingredients. How about only 4 regular ingredients and minimal steps to create something that looks fancy and is bite sized to boot? I present to you the eggnog mousse filled sugar cookie cups. Refrigerated sugar cookie dough, instant vanilla pudding, eggnog, and whipped cream. Boom, you’re welcome.

Turn those leftover apple skins and cores from making homemade applesauce and apple pie into jelly! Tastes great and you get to make the most out of every aspect of the apple.

So after you are done peeling and coring all those apples to make a delicious apple pie, are you supposed to just throw away the skins and cores? No! Don’t you dare throw those precious morsels into the waste basket. They are the perfect candidates for making homemade apple jelly. It make look a bit gross while it cooks down but I promise it results in the best apple jelly. And you will feel resourceful by using every part of the apple.

This recipe uses the skins and cores from 20 pounds of apples, which were used to make a bunch of homemade applesauce and two apple pies. In case you did not just have an apple-fest, you could also use whole apples to make this jelly. Five pounds of whole chopped apples may be substituted for the peels and skins from 20 pounds of apples. The most important part is making sure you have the exact amount of juice and sugar. Happy canning!

Turn those end-of-season strawberries into delicious homemade jarred jam. Other than freezing them, it’s the best way to enjoy berries year round.

While many of your have just started picking strawberries at your local U-pick farm, in east Tennessee strawberry season is ending and we are beginning blueberry and raspberry picking season. Which means it’s the perfect time to make jam out of those end of season strawberries. While jam making is not something I normally dive in to, my dad has made jam and jelly for as long as I can remember and therefore has all the tools to do so. We actually made this jam at the same time as the strawberry syrup.

Homemade strawberry syrup only requires two ingredients: strawberries and sugar. Whip up a batch for breakfast this weekend.

Not only is my dad the king of pancakes (amongst other things), but he also makes his own syrup. Growing up in upstate NY we had the luxury of having a small patch of woods behind our house with sugar maples, which my dad would tap in the winter to collect some of their sap which would be boiled down into maple syrup. Sadly I did not appreciate it as a kid and only wanted Mrs. Butterworth’s. Since my parents moved to TN he cannot make his own maple syrup anymore but still continues to make homemade strawberry syrup which has always been my favorite anyway. I love serving it over waffles, pancakes, or French toast topped with even more strawberries. We made a huge batch from one of our strawberry picking excursions, multiplying the recipe below in order to make 5 quarts. This is one of the reasons why they own a chest freezer.

This Rainbow Fruit Pizza Tart will create spontaneous smiles with a sugar cookie crust, vanilla Greek-cream cheese filling and a rainbow of fruit.

Silly me forgot to tell you something last week – I had a phone interview for a job! I thought it went very well and was also given a writing assignment afterwards to complete within a week. I sent it back a day early and am now waiting to see if I make it into the next stage of the interview process. Of course in the mean time I am still working on other applications. The job market is too rough out there to be idle between interviews.

I also have not been idle in the kitchen department. I thought for sure I would have to cut back on the amount of posts per week but I’ve been able to coast along as normal. Thank goodness because ideas have started coming out of my ears. This fruit pizza isn’t a novel concept but that doesn’t mean it is any less fun. I technically made the rainbow backwards since red has a longer wavelength than violet and therefore would be on the outer edge of a rainbow (nerd alert). I prefer purple over red anyway, but regardless of technicalities you cannot help but feel happy from just looking at this colorful fruit tart.

Earlier this year I was introduced to Zulka Pure Cane Sugar,an all-natural and unrefined granulated sugar, and was very pleased with it after testing it out in several recipes. Today, I’m writing to let you know about Zulka’s Holiday Bake-Off contest! To celebrate the holiday season, Zulka is hosting a Holiday Bake-Off Facebook contest for a chance to win $500 to Sur La Table! Entering is easy:

I know I am not giving you much warning with the deadline only being a couple of days away, but if you needed an excuse to bake any more festive treats for the holidays now is the time! To sweeten the deal, I am also giving away a bag of Zulka to one reader! Just use the Rafflecopter widget at the bottom of this post (giveaway ends Sunday night).

But before you rush off to enter the contest and giveaway, you really should stick around for this recipe I made. It’s a chess pie recipe from the days when my parents lived in Texas. My mom included this recipe in the recipe box she gave me when I left for college many years ago but I did not make it until now. In her directions she said to use lemon juice, coconut, or crushed pineapple. With Meyer lemons in season right now, there was an obvious winner.

Being that this was the first ever chess pie that I have made, I was a bit nervous to share it with people who had grown up in the South and ate this pie on the regular. To my satisfaction it passed the test. I was told that they had had regular, buttermilk, and chocolate chess pies but never lemon – and they liked it! Sounded like a good candidate for me to enter into Zulka’s Holiday Bake-Off ;-).

After making peanut butter baklava bars I immediately knew I wanted to try it out with pumpkin for the holidays. As much as I loved the peanut butter version, how could it not be just as good if not better with pumpkin? With the cinnamon, honey, and nuts floating around in there it was meant to be.

The result is what I imagine would happen if pumpkin pie and baklava got together and made babies. With a sugar cookie base, pumpkin-walnut filling, crispy fillo topping and completely coated in honey, it’s two deserts in one. As a bonus it’s easy to make and therefore should definitely make it for your upcoming festive gatherings.

As far as the job search is going, I have applied to many, but no hooks just yet. I just have to keep applying for those which interest me and I am qualified for and hope for the best. I probably should track down contact numbers to HR or whoever I can find to inquire about my applications. Unfortunately several to which I have applied explicitly say that calls are not welcome. Ugh… Thankfully I have a couple little projects to fiddle with in the lab to keep me busy in the meantime and will be resubmitting my paper now that I have finished addressing reviewers comments. Having that paper in press will definitely improve my CV!